Revision summary
Control without police uses gossip, ridicule, and witchcraft accusation. Feud and compensation handle homicide, as among the Nuer. Taboo, oath, and ordeal are ritual courts. Big-men and age-sets organise following and discipline. Simple names scale, not the absence of order.
Model answer
Introduction
Simple societies often lack a police and a written code. They still control behaviour through kin, ritual, talk, and force that is socially named.
Body
Informal and jural
- Ridicule, gossip, and witchcraft accusation, as Evans-Pritchard showed among Azande, police the envious and the rude.
- Kin avoidance and respect rules, as in Indian tribal in-law taboos, prevent daily friction.
- Blood feud and leopard-skin peacemaking among Nuer turn homicide into a payable account.
Ritual and belief
- Taboo and oath bind the person. Ordeal and oracle decide guilt where evidence is thin.
- Initiation installs the law in the body. Elders’ curses matter where the state does not.
Political
- Big-man generosity, as Sahlins described in Melanesia, buys following without a crown.
- Age-sets among Maasai-type systems discipline youth.
- Gluckman’s peace in the feud: conflict is channelled, not absent.
Limit of the word simple
- These mechanisms are complex. ‘Simple’ means scale and lack of specialised courts, not lack of law.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD SC[Social control] --> G[Gossip witchcraft] SC --> F[Feud compensation] SC --> R[Taboo ordeal] SC --> B[Big-man elders]
Conclusion
Social control in small-scale societies runs on gossip, witchcraft belief, feud-and-peace, ritual taboo, and big-man or elder authority. It is law without a police file.
Quick related
Students also ask
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Critically examine different Anthropological approaches to Religion.
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Is there no crime in simple societies?
There is breach. The response is kin and ritual, not always a prison.
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Did all such societies lack chiefs?
No. Many had chiefs. The contrast is specialised bureaucracy, not all hierarchy.
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